Book Review: ‘Strictly Pleasure’ by Nadine Wiilder

Strictly Pleasure is an apt title for Nadine Wilder’s erotic e-book. It is a story about a young libertine who drifts into diverse sexual adventures, many of which involve some variation of D/s. As the book begins, Cordelia is balancing relationships with two men, Ralph, a submissive house slave, and her boss, Nigel, an alpha male who incorporates bondage and discipline into her daily office routine.

Cordelia’s relationship with Ralph, while not exactly mainstream, certainly seems authentic. Readers can easily buy into this particular manifestation of a femdom relationship. That is not the case, however, with the dynamic between Cordelia and Nigel. Although it makes for a fun and sexy fantasy, the whole set up is totally over the top. Unless labor laws are very different or nonexistent in the U.K., it is highly unlikely that an employer could or would require his employee to submit to corporal punishment and sexual humiliation as a condition of employment. Great fantasy, but improbable as hell.

The delicate balance between Cordelia’s dual lives begins to unravel after she agrees to be the entertainment at a gala event held by Nigel’s friends and fellow kinksters. Absolutely, this segment of the book is the best written and most fun. In addition to experiencing her first public sexual humiliation, Cordelia is introduced to the pleasures of Sapphic sex at the hands of Inez, Nigel’s lover and… domme. Indeed, Nigel too has been switching between the top and bottom in his sexual roles.

From this point on Cordelia and her lovers undergo a great deal of angst as she adjusts to these developments as well as a new and persistent suitor, Lucien. Relatively soon after Lucien arrives on the scene, the story winds down to a messy and unlikely end, which includes a presumptive HEA plus a little moralizing about Cordelia’s past ritualistic relationships with Ralph and Nigel holding her back from the mostly normal and loving relationship that she really wants.

Whether or not they are entirely plausible, the erotic elements of this book are fairly well done. No doubt different scenarios will resonate with some and not with others. For me at least, the storyline was a little weak. I found my interest waning after about a half-hour of reading and consequently getting through the story took much longer than normal for a book of this length.

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About Jim Lyon

Jim Lyon began writing erotica in the mid 1990s and served as story editor for the now-defunct Ownme.com before his first femdom-themed erotic novellas, Uncharted Territory and The Accidental Domme, were published as e-books by Sizzler Editions. Jim is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. He left high school in his senior year to live the bohemian life in New York City's Greenwich Village and Lower East Side. Not being a big fan of cold weather and crowded tenements, Jim returned to the West Coast within six months and lived in Berkeley during the tumultuous mid to late 1960s and early 1970s. While there, his claims to fame include being folksinger Malvina Reynolds' neighbor/tenant and part owner of the Northside Theater, a repertory cinema of considerable renown. After leaving Berkeley, Jim put himself through college and earned a B.A. in Journalism from USC. His eclectic career since then has encompassed editing, writing, business management, social work, teaching, and web publishing, with stops in northern and southern California, Hawaii, Florida and Oregon.